


Amending the End Game

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Prison Break
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 12:22:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10639761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: Gretchen comes to collect what she’s due. [Eulogy is essentially the prologue to this story.]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically post-season 4. I made conjecture about what would happen in the final six episodes. This was written before anyone knew that Christina was such an evil character.

The beach is silent, serene even, except for the waves moving languidly back and forth over the same outcropping of rocks and expanse of sand. He stands alone, his clothing not what makes him identifiable. In fact, she’d seen him in a suit exactly once, but it had been a dark suit, not a cream, linen three piece, that even from this distance she can tell has to be Armani.  
  
Of course, he’s not fully suited up now, either. The white shirttails hang out of the waistband of the trousers. The vest remains fastened, over the shirt whose buttons have been neglected. His feet are bare, and there is no sign of the jacket anywhere. No telling where he lost that; knowing him, he probably tossed it into the ocean. The way he wears his clothes has often made her aware that there is no woman in his life. Or at least, no woman with taste. Although this ensemble is getting there. He looks good; he looks like he could play the part. His mother must have gotten him a whole new wardrobe.  
  
Gretchen Morgan walks towards him very aware this might be the last thing she ever does. Lying under the hot lights in a Miami hospital operating room, the victim of Lincoln's mercy, she had come to the conclusion that if she was going to die in this line of work, it needed to be at the hands of someone who deserved the opportunity to kill her.  
  
Funny that she’s chosen him to be that person. There is nothing particularly remarkable about him. He’s a good looking man, yes, but he isn’t exceptionally clever like his brother, or even admirably ruthless like the General. He isn’t deceptive enough to fool everyone into believing whatever he wants them to believe like James Whistler was, nor is he so abnormally fond of himself that he thinks his greed can promote his ridiculous agenda like Bagwell or Self.  
  
No, Lincoln Burrows is none of the things that would make him a good partner in crime. But she remembers two moments under the hot Panamanian sun when she’d discovered the thing about him that made him singular, made him stand out from a long line of men who had passed through her life like a caravan of meal tickets. One was when he could have killed her so easily, not just because he had her defenseless, but because of the rage she could feel radiating out of the fist tangled in her hair; he hadn’t because he really thought her henchman would hurt his son. He let her go on breathing on the slim, vague hope that it would keep his son alive. The other moment had been the day she let him have five minutes with his son, a gesture of good faith to ensure that he would keep up his end of the deal. At the time, watching him make promises to LJ, promises he had no idea or guarantee that he could follow through on, hadn’t warmed her heart. Long before that day, she’d been desensitized to displays of familial loyalty or the desperate clench of their bodies as they embraced for perhaps the last time.   
  
But he was a parent, really and truly. And he'd had to say anything,  _do_  anything to try to preserve that tie. He had the quality that she did not when it came to her own child. She knew she should feel it, but as close as she’d ever come to it was by giving Emily to Rita. That was her first and only parental gesture.  
  
Lincoln is simple. Lincoln lives for only one thing, his family. He has no grand plan, no hopes to free the world from tyranny or the unjust acts of so many people.   
  
What a horrible thing it must have been to come here and discover his mother was alive, and had been alive all these years. What a horrible realization it must have been to learn that he hadn’t inherited this trait from either of his parents. Oh, certainly his father and mother both would have tried to sell him on the ‘I-had-to-protect-you-the-only-way-I-knew-how’ angle, but Gretchen knew the truth. Selfishness is what made you walk away from your children – the inability to give what a parent has to give to really be a parent.  
  
Well, that, and a love of money. Wasn't that the root of all evil? She's pretty sure she heard that someplace.  
  
But the reason she knew for sure, was because she was just like them.  
  
His eyes lift as she closes the distance between them. She hasn’t seen him in nearly three months, and their last encounter had been over the length of his arm as he held his gun to her head. He doesn’t have a gun now, she’s sure, but she knows his hands could choke the life out of her. She’ll let him do whatever he wants, as long as he lays those hands on her. She likes to think she wouldn't even struggle as the death rattled in her lungs; she likes to think she'd give him that because he wouldn't torture her. He'd do it quick and easy. He'd be merciful, even in execution.  
  
He seems unsurprised by her presence, but as she correctly assumes, what more could surprise him now? In the aftermath of his mother’s hostile takeover of The Company as her final act of atonement for what she'd done to her children, how can anything that happens ever shock him or inspire him or defeat him again?  
  
He’s still here, on this tiny little island, away from his brother, his son, and little Sofia, the people who love him. The people who want him back whole and unbroken; the people he has not returned to for some reason.  
  
Something Gretchen thinks she understands.  
  
He doesn’t say anything as she comes to a stop before him. His blue eyes examine her face for a moment before moving down over her body, which is clothed in a black button up blouse and matching slacks. She left her shoes in the car because walking on sand in high heels would be beyond stupid, but she doesn’t own any suitable ‘vacation’ clothes. She ought to have found some sort of soft, flowing pale swath of fabric, something inviting and attractive to wear. Something that would compliment him.  
  
But she knows a pretty package won’t make him anymore likely to take her up on her offer than something already pressed neatly inside her suitcase. The only thing she’s ever truly wanted besides power and money and the upper hand stands before her squinting into the sun, and as usual she has no idea what his expression means.  
  
“You here to settle up?” he asks, the gruffness of his voice surprising her. It sounds as though he hasn’t spoken aloud to anyone in a long time.  
  
She nods, not trusting her own voice to sound strong and confident.  
  
“How is it that you’re not dead, or in prison?”  
  
She can’t help but smile at this question. She can hear the admiration in his tone, and it’s the only clue she has that maybe he’ll wait to kill her, at least long enough to get some pleasure out of her first. “I could tell you,” she quips with just enough menace to make it unfunny, “but then I’d have to kill you.”  
  
“And you’re not here to do that anyway?” he questions, one eyebrow lifting sardonically.  
  
She looks away from his face, the feeling in her chest so foreign she wants to turn and run back up the length of the coast almost as much as she wants him. “No,” she answers truthfully. “Not here for that.” The cowardly impulse sickens her a bit, and she flashes back through quick memories of people she's killed who mattered not at all. How can this moment, this  _possibility_ , be the thing that she cannot do?  
  
Because once she was ordered to decapitate Sara Tancredi and she hadn't done it. She'd lost all control and then spent days scrambling to cover her ass. It had nothing to do with Lincoln; and everything to do with him. He was unremarkable, except that she cared what he thought. It wasn't anything he'd done, really, it was just her own sick awakening of need and want. Of course, she still had an angle on this, because you should never just ask for one thing when you could demand two.  
  
“Here for the other, then?” he says, the slight inflection making it a question, but the assurance in his assumption drips from each word.  
  
She forces her eyes back to his face. “I want what I want, Lincoln. What I’ve always wanted.”  
  
“Because if I fuck you, I won’t kill you? Is that what you think?” The darkness in his face tells her he hasn’t made up his mind yet himself, so how can she know the outcome?  
  
“I don’t think there’s any guarantee in any action. I’d just prefer one before the other, is all.” She’s practiced this speech in her head for months. Every move she’s made to get here has been for the silliest school girl reasoning she can conjure, unless it works, and then she'll be the most brilliant of them all. She blames years of risk taking and various intervals of untold physical pain and mental anguish for her need for instant gratification. Though, if she finally gets what she wants here, it will just be gratification. Nothing instant about it, and nothing brief either. She’ll stay as long as he’ll have her, as long as he’ll take her, if he’ll take her at all. And in turn, she'll take it all too.  
  
A mirthless sound escapes his lips, something one who has never seen war might call a laugh.   
  
Gretchen hopes it’s the intonation of surrender, though she acknowledges that it could be her death knell. “I prefer the one before the other, too,” he says, though she doesn't know if his preference is the same as hers.  
  


*

  
  
The little bungalow he's been living in–where his mother had lived before her real death–is quaint. Lincoln fits there no more than she does, Gretchen muses, as he opens the door and walks in ahead of her. The big house where she parked her car must be for appearance’s sake, but that's where, in her humble opinion, he ought to be living. She follows closely behind him, afraid that he might change his mind and shut the door on her, separating them again.  
  
She doesn't understand why her desire for him makes her feel so weak and why she doggedly pursues it. Any sign of weakness should be obliterated, not amplified, and she ought to be thousands of miles away from this place. It seems, in the end, even self-preservation fades when darkness swallows you whole. But then there was that adage about weak things becoming strong, and Gretchen can't help but think this may be true of her. The one thing she can't let go could lead her to the biggest payoff of them all.  
  
The house is dim, the curtains drawn across the various windows keeping the bright sunlight from touching too much inside the front room. She doesn't have much time to look around and familiarize herself with the size and space and furniture, because as she attempts to close the door behind her, he turns to her and shoves her up against it, effectively latching the lock and immobilizing her. His hands move from her shoulders down, skimming over her breasts, which are suddenly aching, the flood of sexual electricity erupting throughout her body with only this initial move on his part. Unless it's fear she should be feeling instead, it's the most glorious moment of her life thus far.  
  
She has always wanted him; from the first moment she laid eyes on him, she felt the pull, the inner tug that made her want to spread her legs indecently in silent offering. Over time, she realized that Lincoln was very like her–though his ability to love whole-heartedly would always be the differentiation between them–but the other likenesses is what attracts her. An instinctual acknowledgment on a cellular level that grew deeper as time went by, but never made her think she loved him, or could by any definition of the word even feel overly tenderly towards him. However, the animal need to claim, and to dominate him in some way nips at her heels, and the strength of that desire is why she's here now, in the one place she should have avoided at all costs.  
  
See as much as she wants him to claim her, to send her mindlessly into the realm of tactile sensation and to erase everything except the rush and flow of blood under her skin, she wants to do that to  _him_. She wants him to beg her and whimper, and plead, and lose all sense of time and space.  
  
She wants to wipe his mind clear of everything–especially that automatic hatred and loathing that he has felt for her since he first discovered why she'd sought him out.  
  
Now, his hands move over her waist, fingers from one hand unsnapping the button of her pants while his other fingers push her zipper down. Then they separate, moving inside the waistband, each calloused palm smoothing over a corresponding hip to drag the material down as he kneels before her. Using one of his knees to hold her clothing to the floor, his hands run roughly, but caressingly down the front sides of her thighs and then his arms slip between and behind her legs, yanking her right off her feet. His palms brace his stance against the closed front door and her feet dangle over the edges of his elbows as he lowers his head, his tongue arrowing with devastating accuracy between her already trembling thighs. Gretchen's arms fly up without a conscious thought to keep her steady, but he's in total control and her minor effort to grasp the door frame edge is unnecessary.  
  
Her head thumps loudly against the oak behind her and she groans in unexpected delight as he violently and thoroughly sets his mouth over her, sucking and biting and thrusting his tongue at such a rate that she is drenching wet and in the throes of an all-consuming orgasm before she even comprehends totally that he didn't plan to just kill her.  
  
The sudden rush of his assault doesn't sap her of strength in the way that it should–perhaps that had been his intent, though she will never know because she would never ask–and when he abruptly drops his arms so that her feet crash back to the floor, Gretchen doesn't lose her stride. He might have taken her by surprise, but she will give back equally. Lifting one bare foot up–wishing for a split second that she had her stilettos on to make her point more clearly–she kicks him squarely in the chest, and from his crouched position he falls back too easily, so that as she looks down at him, she can see the evidence in his pants that what he just did to her affected him as well.  
  
Straddling him, she opens his trousers as quickly as he did hers, and before his erection thrusts eagerly into her palms, she admires the crisp linen fabric, even more certain of its origin at such close proximity. She cradles him carefully, though she lets her gaze bore into his threateningly, as though her next act might show that the war between them is far from over. Leaning over him, she follows his lead, not undressing him any more than is necessary for what she's going to do. He's large, his girth and length unsurprising to her based on her own imaginings of this moment, but she still takes a moment to inspect him. She wonders if maybe it's penis envy–what various men have accused her of over the years–that causes her to hesitate and not fall on him in exactly the same way he did her; but it's actually the sudden intimacy of the act she's about to perform that gives her pause.   
  
They've never kissed each other's lips, and maybe they never will, but as she takes his cock into her mouth and his tortured groan fills the room, she finds herself hoping that this will empty his mind of the vile things he thinks of her.  
  
Suckling with just enough pressure to give immense pleasure–the associated pain the kind that is only satisfied by a continuation, rather than a cessation of movement–she realizes she is no better than so many other women who give sex to get love. She doesn't delude herself that she wants Lincoln's love, only that she doesn't want his hate. She wants the victory that comes when his fingers tangle in her hair, jerking her head against his body as his hips lift in need of fulfillment, and tears even burn her eyes when he curses her, because it's  _her name_  he says as his semen fills her mouth. She swallows greedily, as if it's an elixir for the gross depravity of her life.  
  
His harsh breathing is the only sound that follows, since she's holding her own in an effort to be aware of every detail. It's too bad she couldn't have recorded that for posterity’s sake; she knows he'd probably rather be dead than let Michael, or the precious Doctor, or especially the little  _chiquita_ , ever know that he came in her mouth. Or that it only took about 60 seconds for it to happen.  



	2. Chapter 2

Lincoln, for a short moment, tries to remember his last blowjob. He can't, everything before Fox River is a haze, and as Gretchen sits back, her full, curvy ass resting on his thighs, he realizes it doesn't matter who was the last to gift him with such a thing or when he received it.  
  
All that matters is that she is fucking amazing at it, which shouldn't surprise him. She's probably had lots of practice, though the fact that she didn't deep throat him and it was still mind numbingly thorough perplexes him--but also, just for a short moment.   
  
If he had any air left for words, he might even thank her. At least give her an  _atta girl_. His chest heaves as he recovers, and he relishes the idea of trying to one-up her, because if she's going to try to beat him at this,  _this_  is something he can enjoy losing.  
  
Why did he ever try to fight her? He almost can't remember. Of course, looking back, he's unsure of why he did a lot of things, since in the end they didn't matter one fucking bit. He doesn't want to dwell on any of that, though. Not why he and Michael haven't spoken in months, or how he somehow gets up every day and puts on three-piece suits and does shit he never dreamed of doing, or how in a hundred thousand years the only thing he wants to do right now is reach up and unbutton Gretchen Morgan's tailored black shirt and fill his palms with her breasts.   
  
So he doesn't dwell on it, he just does it, unfastening her blouse without haste; after all, it will take him some time to recuperate, and he might as well enjoy the show for as long as it lasts. At some point she'll get around to telling him why she's really here, and he doubts either of them will want to fuck after that comes up.   
  
Well, maybe they'll still want to, but Lincoln knows at some point grace will intervene, and he'll have to start doing the right thing again.   
  
She’s built like a brick shithouse, something he's thought about her since the first time he saw her. All lush curves and tight muscles, she's gorgeous in all the outward terms of beauty. But because of what's inside her, it's all he can do to not just devour her, ravage her, leave her like a victim on the side of the road. Forcing himself to go slowly, he moves his fingers fleetingly over her nipples, pass-by grazing, as he pushes her shirt down her arms. Leaving her bra in place, his eyes descend to her mostly bare legs.   
  
He'd been right about her not wearing underwear, though she has a sexy black garter belt on, holding up equally sexy black stockings that go up just past her knees. He'd noticed them when he peeled her pants down, but he'd also noticed an array of scars over the tops of her thighs that the garter didn't hide. He traces his thumbs down the insides of her legs, away from her wet center, touching the most severe marks. Then he lifts his eyes to hers, asking the question silently.   
  
"You don't want to know," she says, her voice hushed, her eyes on his face. "No details to make you feel sorry for me."   
  
He grunts, and answers bluntly, "I doubt knowing would change anything about how I feel about you."   
  
"Yeah," she replies with a slight curve to her lips. "I probably deserved it."   
  
The sarcasm in her tone aggravates Lincoln, so he shoves his hand back up between her legs, sticking his thumb roughly where his tongue had been not very long ago. She's still slick from her orgasm, and he can't help himself from thumbing her clit aggressively. Whimpering, she stiffens against him, and her fingernails carve sharply into the skin of his hips, where her hands still rest. "Do you deserve this?" he asks, moving his thumb in a circular motion and watching with feral satisfaction as her teeth dig into her bottom lip in an effort to keep any other sounds from breaking from her throat.   
  
"God, yes," she mumbles, her head falling forward as though her neck doesn't have the strength to hold it up. Her eyes drift shut as she loses herself to the rhythm of moving her hips back and forth to make the motion of his thumb all the more rewarding.   
  
"I knew you wouldn't wear panties," he remarks, the tightening of his stomach muscles letting him know that his own personal revival is only a few moments away.   
  
She gasps as he turns his hand slightly so that his first and middle fingers slide inside her, but she manages to ask, "How?"   
  
"Whores don't waste time with barriers, do they?" he asks, which causes her head to snap up and her eyes to fly open.   
  
She reaches out, and he can't help but flinch, wondering if she's going to grab him by the shorthairs for that one, though he welcomes the idea of their mutual desire to inflict pain upon one another. Her hands grasp the bottom edges of his vest, and she yanks the lapels apart, sending the three buttons pinging in various directions. Then she grabs at his white dress shirt, her fingers curling over the long V that hangs almost to his navel and repeats the motion so that his chest and abdomen are exposed to her hands. The light grazing of her fingernails over his quivering stomach is the last ingredient necessary for his cock to stand at full attention, and Gretchen, as if sensing that's all it would take, doesn't hesitate. Rising up on her knees, she shoves his hand away from her snatch, scooting forward at the same moment that she wraps her fist around him. Squeezing none too gently, she holds him so that as her creamy warmth envelopes him her other hand braces her position of dominance over him and she slams herself down so that he's swallowed all at once, and the sheer ecstasy of it nearly makes him come on the first stroke.   
  
Leaning over him, she whispers, "I'm only your whore if you pay me, Linc. Are you gonna pay me?"   
  
Incapable of speech at the moment, he only moans an incomprehensible response as he clamps his hands on her hips and attempts to control her movements somewhat. He knows she will make him pay, in some way... There will be a giant-ass fine for giving into the need to fuck her, but he can't even imagine, at present anyway, why he wouldn't be willing to pay hand over fist whatever the price is.   
  
Her palms flatten on his chest, molding to the curves of his pectoral muscles with indecent precision. His eyes roll back in his head, and all he can think as he chases the white lightening moment that is just beyond his reach is that they fit together too damn well, and it's going to be harder to let go of it than it ever was to grab on to it.   
  
Pulling her down hard into him, he feels her start to come just before he totally loses it, and he consoles himself with the fact that at least they're both getting something out of it.  
  
She falls forward once they're both finished, her black hair splaying across his chest as she shimmies her hips away from his. Residue of his semen glistens on his pant leg as she attempts to slide off of him, but one of his arms wraps around her back, not letting her move completely away. He doesn't know if that's her intent, but he's not even close to being done yet.   
  
Her head lifts as she feels him pulling her against him and he flips up on to his side so that they lay on the plush carpet facing each other. Her eyes search for his and he sends the arm not already cradling her against him to find the fastening of her bra. Expertly releasing the catch, he feels her breasts shift forward slightly into his chest. He looks down, tugging at the straps until the unwanted garment slips down between their bellies. Her nipples are darker than he expected, not quite brown, but a dusky pink color that intrigues him far more than it should. They're just boobs, and he's seen a few hundred pair in his lifetime if he's seen one. All the same, hers are impressive, not too large, not too small, and because it's the only way to know for sure, he cups the right one in his left hand— _perfect_ , he laments, as it fits into his palm nicely. When her nipple hardens against the fleshy pads at the base of his fingers without him even offering a caress, he curses out loud.  
  
That's when he finally returns her stare, her ice blue eyes confused, either by his refusal to let her move away from him, or his choice now to utter epithets in her honor. "Why do I want you so much?" he questions, feeling it's easier to pose a question that has an obvious answer than the other, much more difficult ones.  
  
"Because I want you," she states, which isn't what he would have thought she'd say at all. "I'm an easy lay. A sure thing. You don't even have to try, after all. I came all this way for you, you could hardly doubt my intentions."  
  
He chuckles, removing his arm from around her so he can lean on his elbow now that she's stopped trying to squirm away from him. "I could hardly even know your intentions, you mean. You're not going to lie and say you came here just to get laid, are you? I'm not that stupid. I'm stupid enough to let my guard down with you, to let this happen, possibly fall asleep and wake up dead, but I know you're here for more than some cock."  
  
"No," she says slowly, her eyes fluttering as his thumb starts moving over the hardened center of her breast caressingly. "I'm not going to lie to you."   
  
When she says nothing further, he nudges her with one leg. "So you're just not going to talk at all, huh? Avoid having to lie."  
  
"Seems like a good plan, since I can tell you're gearing up to fuck me again. Maybe when I've gotten enough, I'll tell you what you want to hear." The breathless quality in her voice encourages him to slip his leg between hers. The silky glide of her stockings against the expensive fabric of his pants is sufficiently erotic, ensuring it will be a long while before he feels completely satisfied.  
  
Leaning his face very close to hers, he whispers, "How long till you get enough?"  
  
Watching her pupils expand with such wanton lust makes his cock stir inexplicably, as if he were 16 again. "I'll have to get back to you on that," she breathes, her voice trailing off into a low moan when he pinches her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.  
  
He thinks her next move is completely spontaneous, because the look of surprise that widens her eyes is almost comical as her fingers curl around the nape of his neck to tug his face closer to hers, until their lips are only a hairs-breadth apart. Lincoln holds back, though it feels like a gargantuan effort to do so. When he whispers, "Give me an guesstimate," their lips brush with the motion. He can tell, like him, she's got no control over it.   
  
She might be the most calculating bitch he's ever fucked, but she's powerless as long as she can see how much he wants her. And goddamn him, but he wants her more than anything he can presently recollect.  
  
Ultimately, it is she who closes what little distance is left between them. Her lips rub against his, and then he feels her smile, and it somehow doesn't feel like the cynical sneer he's always associated with her. Not that he can see it, because his eyes have closed and then his tongue is in her mouth, and a new battle for domination has begun.   
  


*

  
  
They eventually make it to his bedroom, and to his bed, but Lincoln isn’t sure how much time passes. At some point, however, it finally catches up with him and he becomes so exhausted he is unable to keep his eyes open any longer. His hand moves through her hair, and he mumbles something akin to an apology, but all he hears from her is a soft murmur, and then her lips brush at his temple.  
  
It’s that gentleness that makes him think he won’t wake up dead, but he also, in part, just doesn’t care. If she came to rape and pillage, he doesn’t have the energy to worry about it. He lets unconsciousness draw him away from her, but she’s still in his dreams, so he cannot fully escape.  
  
When he awakes, the room is dusky, but not dark. The sun doesn’t set until 8 or 9 at night, so it can’t be much later than that. His stomach grumbles loudly, reminding him that sex is not enough to survive on. (Though he’d sure like to try.)  
  
She’s not on the pillow next to him; instead her head lies on his stomach, her hair fanned out over his chest. One arm is curled around his hips, while the other is flung out beside them in the large expanse of bed they haven’t yet abused. It’s an oddly sweet sight, the crisscrossing of scars on her back notwithstanding, and he’s not all too sure what he thinks of it. She has scars all over her body, and the only one he knows the origination of is the bullet wound in her abdomen.  
  
She stirs, and he doesn’t know if she was already awake, or if his movements are what disturbed her, but her head shifts, and he can feel her lips just below his navel, brushing softly over the thin line of hair there. She doesn’t kiss him, per se, but the caress is just one more thing that sets him on edge. He realizes he’d much rather her be harsh than tender, because at least he knows how to react to the hostility.  
  
“Don’t you dare bite me,” he warns (or prompts, maybe? he’s not sure), wrapping his fingers around the back of her neck.  
  
He feels her smile against his sensitive flesh, and though, like before the sensation is fleeting, he once again feels as though she has lost some of the cynicism he’s come to expect from her. “Only love bites,” she promises, though her teeth still don’t emerge, only her tongue, and she licks a straight line from his belly button down to his quickly awakening cock.  
  
“Oh, shit,” he breathes, and he isn’t sure if he’s referring to the delicious torture that she’s initiating, or the fact that she just used the word ‘love’ in reference to anything between them.  
  
Running her tongue down the length of his erection, she scoots around so that her ass is closer to his face, and the wicked thought that flashes through his mind must be what she’s thinking as well. Hours ago, they’d abandoned their clothes, but he still finds her nudity almost more distracting than the attention of her lips and tongue on the underside of his penis.  
  
Letting go of her neck, he puts both hands on her bottom and when she lifts one leg, he knows she wants the same thing he does. Pulling her leg over his chest, he has a grand view of the tight area he’s inhabited over the course of a blissful afternoon, and he tries in vain to remember the last time he had such dirty sex.  
  
See, Gretchen appears to have lifted every single thought from every single one of his fantasies, and it unnerves him that she’s in his head so effectively. So while she sucks him dry, he tongue fucks her into oblivion and tries to ignore the screaming fear inside of him.  
  
After that, he can’t help but ask, “You hungry?” because his stomach will not accept his neglect any longer.  
  
She rolls over, using the corner of the sheet to dab at her chin, wiping away the last vestiges of his semen, and replies, “I could eat. You have food here?” she asks, the skepticism in her tone rampant.  
  
“Of course, I have food here,” he snaps, sitting up. “I live here, don’t I?” Climbing off the bed, he reaches for a pair of boxer briefs from the top drawer of his dresser. “Besides, there’s someone who does all the shopping and shit for me. I’m sure there’s even girl food in there.”  
  
He turns to face her, wondering what smart remark she’ll have about the food situation, but what he sees brings him up short. She’s buttoning up his white dress shirt, her breasts disappearing from his view as she slips the second-to-the-top disc through the corresponding hole in the fabric. “What do you mean, girl food?” she asks, looking up at him as she finishes. When he just stares at her dumbly, she looks down at herself quickly, only to meet his eyes again. “What?”   
  
He doesn’t like it, her in his shirt, them about to share a meal. Whenever he’d thought about this scenario before, it had been a hard, fast fuck and then he walked away, or drove away, or whatever. They didn’t linger, they didn’t spend hours in bed together, they didn’t… _this_. Whatever this was, they weren’t supposed to do it. It felt…too, domestic, or normal, or just…what, he couldn’t decide.  
  
But at the same moment, he didn’t want her to leave, and if he said any of that, she probably would. So he just shrugs, glancing away from her.   
  
“You don’t want me to wear your shirt?” she inquires, and he can’t hear anything in her tone, either positive or negative.   
  
“No, it’s fine,” he says, dragging his gaze back to her. She looks good in it. Her hair is totally disheveled, her face rosy from the sleeping and the fucking, and as far as he can tell, her blue eyes even hold a hint of warmth.  
  
And that’s when it hits him. It’s like he doesn’t even know her. He went to bed with one woman, but he’s waking up to a different one, one who might wear his clothes and eat his food, and… _sleep_  in his bed.  
  
Not just be someone he screws when the opportunity presents itself and then leaves when he commands it, or even before he says it aloud.  
  
He can’t deal with it at all, so he turns around and walks out of the room, even though her expression plainly shows she doesn’t believe it’s all right with him that she’s wearing his clothes.  
  
She follows him out into the kitchen, her bare feet slapping on the tile behind him. “What’s the problem?” she demands, but still she doesn’t even sound like the Gretchen he remembers.   
  
She sounds like a lover.  _His_  lover.  
  
“Why are you really here?” he counters, spinning around to face her. He puts a hand on the refrigerator door, but he doesn’t pull it open.  
  
She doesn’t respond immediately. As though sizing him up, her eyes travel the length of his body, which is still naked except for his underwear. When her gaze returns to his face, she takes a step towards him, but she doesn’t follow through on it, stopping before they are within touching distance. Folding her arms over her chest,  _over his white dress shirt_ , she sighs heavily. “I came here for two reasons,” she begins. “One is that I want you. Not for a night, or even a week or two. I want to be with you.” Her boldness surprises him, not because it’s unlike her to be so ballsy, but because the hint of vulnerability in her declaration is palpable between them. “The other,” she continues, “is The Company. I want to run The Company with you. I want to be your second in command.”  



	3. Chapter 3

Gretchen watches Lincoln's face carefully, while peripherally measuring every twitch of his body. His fingers are wrapped around the refrigerator door and his stance is defensive even though he's practically naked.  
  
Momma always said the way to a man's heart was through his stomach, but every woman who wanted to survive knew that the way to their wallet was through their cock. Lincoln would be no exception.  
  
But she waits, desperate to see his reaction— _any reaction_ —that will give her a clue as to where she stands on the playing field. She knew she'd been allowed to stay because he was lonely; playing solo on the outer rim with no contact with his loved ones had to be killing him. Striking now while he was most vulnerable had been the smartest move of her lifetime.  
  
Her only problem is that in the course of pursuing his weakness, she has discovered that she really does want the two things she just spelled out for him; and she wants them in the order that she gave them. He is more important to her than The Company. But there's no way she can have one without the other, and really he should want her services. She knows far more about it, and Scylla, than he could possibly have gleaned from the three weeks he spent with his mother before the General, in his last act, successfully ended her life. The fact that Lincoln had in turn ended the General's life was only fitting. The father of her child had been killed by the son of the woman who's place Gretchen had filled for a short time. The circular nature of it all, if Lincoln knew about it, would most likely turn his stomach so much that he would never touch her again. So she didn't intend to enlighten him about that.  
  
When he moves, she braces herself, but doesn't flinch away. Instead when his hand surrounds her throat and his fingers press bruisingly into the underside of her jaw, she lifts herself up on her tiptoes to ease the pressure somewhat. He only has five inches on her, since they’re both bare footed, and she can knee in him the groin any time she wants to, but she finds that surrendering to Lincoln is the best way to win his favor.  
  
"You think I would ever trust you to be my second in command?" he demands, his voice a low growl, the staccato puffs of his words hitting her face warmly. "The only way you'll ever be under me is when we're fucking."  
  
She can't help the smile that slides across her lips. "But we haven't even done it that way yet," she says, her tone petulant. He shakes her hard, once, and she loses the sarcasm. "I'm not threatening you, Lincoln. Is there any reason you feel the need to choke me?"  
  
His nostrils flare and his blue eyes go from hot to cold in two beats of her heart. He visibly relaxes and then he pulls his hand away from her throat, though he barely moves away from her. Crowding her against the island counter, they stand face to face, in total silence, for just a few moments.  
  
Carefully, Gretchen reaches up and puts her hands against his upper chest. Her fingertips move lightly over the hard muscles and supple skin, and then she says, "You wanted to know why I'm here, so I told you. I didn't whip out my contract from Satan for you to sign, so just calm down. Right now, like you, I’m much more interested in eating something. So can we get some food, and you know...talk?"  
  
She pushes him back encouragingly, even though a part of her would like to drag him closer and start the power play all over again. She does so enjoy his submission, in the form of anguished moans and fevered gasps of her name as he comes, either in her mouth or deep inside her, and she fears the imminent removal of her privileges. She’s not ready to be cast aside, not when she’s still so hungry for him.  
  
It's a few minutes of quiet, other than the thudding of a package of lunchmeat, a loaf of bread and various condiments as they hit the counter as he pulls them from the fridge. She still wonders what he meant by the term girl food, and when he tosses her a Yoplait yogurt, she thinks she understands to a certain extent. Without comment, she puts the yogurt back and constructs a sandwich similar to his.  
  
He hoists himself up on to a stool at the bar that is connected to the island counter, so that he is directly across from her as she finishes putting her sandwich together. Turning back to the refrigerator, she looks inside to see what there is to drink. There are three types of beer, all long-necked bottle, to choose from: Heineken, Sam Adams and Beck’s. She hesitates a moment, then remembers what he said about someone doing the shopping for him. There are less of the Sam Adams than the others, so she assumes that’s the one he prefers.  
  
Joining him at the high counter, she brings a bottle for each of them. She's not a fan of the stuff, she'd much rather have wine or vodka, but she drinks what he's drinking as a sign of solidarity. It's all psychological warfare, and for all she knows Lincoln may be immune to it, but then he reaches over and twists the cap off her bottle for her, it makes her hopeful that it's working.  
  
His stare becomes a glower and as he finishes his first sandwich (he made two for himself, not one for each of them) he says, "I think your balls are bigger than mine. I can't believe I let this happen."  
  
Gretchen observes his face impassively for a short while; then taking a bite from her sandwich, she points at him casually. "I've been in this business a long time. It's not that I've got the bigger balls, it's that I've got more exper—“  
  
"What business is this, exactly?" he interrupts. "The killing-and-maiming-business? The stealing-from-third-world-countries business? The lie-to-everyone-who-matters-to-you business?"  
  
Gretchen swallows slowly and then responds. "It's the making-money business, and the inventing-technology-that-saves-people-from-inoperable-tumors business, and the survival-of-the-fittest business. Are you growing a conscience now that you're the head of that?"  
  
"My conscience doesn't have anything to do with this," he practically snarls. "I'm talking about you," he points his entire hand at her, all his fingers straight and rigid. "You're someone's mother, Gretchen. You have a kid. And you're here. Fucking me, and hoping to get paid for it. What the hell is wrong with you? Why aren't you—“ but he doesn't finish asking the question, and she feels a pang, as though hearing the rest of what he might say can somehow make her heart function the way it should. She has no response, but she doesn't need one, because he picks up another thread and runs with it. "I realize some bad shit has happened to you. All those scars tell the tales your mouth never will, but my God, why hasn't whatever caused them made you cling to your daughter and love her and protect her better?"  
  
Surprisingly, she does have the answer to that, and she doesn't hesitate to share it with him, though she drops her half eaten sandwich back to her plate knowing she won't finish it. He's robbed her of her appetite with his judgment. "I protect her every day," she says lowly. "By not being in her life. I made a mistake, going back there, but after I got away from Wyatt, I didn't have anywhere else to go. But she's safe now, and I'd die before I'd seek refuge there again."  
  
His eyebrows shoot up, and she sees a hundred new questions in his eyes, but she’s not going to spin the story for him. It might work, it might garner his sympathy, but she doesn’t want his sympathy. She wants his respect, and his trust, and a partnership, in every sense of the word. When he opens his mouth to respond, she holds up a hand. “Ah, ah, ah,” she says, silencing him with a pointed finger. “Emily is an off-limits subject,” she pauses, and then adds, “much like I suspect your family is a taboo topic as well.”  
  
“Why would my family be a taboo topic?” he asks. “You know them all so well, I’m surprised you haven’t already asked about them.” The sarcasm lacing his tone makes her smile.  
  
“I know where they are,” she admits. “What’s interesting to me is that you’re here, without them. Why haven’t you sent for LJ? You must have guessed this is the safest place for you all now. No one can enter unless you say it’s okay. That’s why you weren’t surprised to see me on the beach earlier, right? How long had you known I was on-island?”  
  
“I was contacted when you left Florida,” he answers.  
  
She sips at her Sam Adams, eyeing him thoughtfully as he polishes off his second sandwich and gulps down what’s left of his beer. “See, being all-powerful has its perks, right? You knew you were gonna get laid long before you saw me.” She watches him while he swipes the back of his hand over his mouth, wiping away the remnants of his meal. Unable to help herself, Gretchen hands him a napkin from a holder sitting on the counter next to her. It’s enough that he ate at the table in nothing but his briefs, but she does feel a certain sense of manners that should be followed.   
  
He grins at her as he snatches the napkin from her fingers, and something about that expression on his face makes her breath hitch in her chest. She hates to extinguish the good humor, especially when it makes him that much more attractive, but she needs to know if her suspicions are correct. “So, why isn’t LJ here?”  
  
“He’s better off with Mike.” Lincoln’s answer is quick and practiced sounding, and she wonders how many times he’s had this conversation with his son.  
  
“Don’t want to teach him the family business, huh?” she asks.  
  
Lincoln hops off the stool and circles the counter to get another beer from the fridge. “Sure as  _hell_  don’t want that,” he mutters.  
  
“Then what are  _you_  doing here?” she asks, slightly aggrieved.   
  
He twists the cap off his second bottle with so much violence, Gretchen wouldn’t have been surprised if the neck snapped and glass showered over his bare legs. He glares at her as if she has accused him of something, so she just remains silent. She has to know, and he has to tell her, and they have to come to some sort of understanding one way or another. She hadn’t come here with a winning hand, she knows that, but she had come armed with her best weapons. She just hadn’t anticipated this feeling—not just the warmth she feels towards him, but the strangeness of his questions about her daughter and his conclusions about her various war wounds, or the fact that he obviously doesn’t like running The Company, but does it anyway.  
  
“I’m giving it away,” he finally tells her, but she can see he regrets it almost instantly. He lifts the bottle to his mouth and drinks it all in two swift chugs. She wonders what he hopes to accomplish with that—both the beer chugging and the…he _what_?  
  
His answer has stunned her, almost into the realm of not being able to react because it’s like she’s been caught in an explosion and she’s shell-shocked. Finally, her stronger instincts kick in and she slides off the stool so that her feet are firmly on the floor beneath her. “What?” she asks, her voice uncommonly calm. Unreasonably calm.  _Ridiculously_  calm.  
  
The exact opposite of what she feels. “What?” she repeats, a little louder.  
  
“I’m working out a deal, right now, to give Scylla away. So everyone can benefit from it.” When he utters these words, she’s suddenly able to interpret his body language. He’s not worried that giving her his secrets will leave him open and vulnerable to an enemy; he’s very aware that what he’s doing will piss her off, and he looks uncomfortable—like a boyfriend caught with his hand in the cookie jar, so to speak.  
  
“Are you a fucking moron?” Gretchen demands, unable to suppress her upper most thoughts.  
  
He shrugs, and then he smiles slyly before tipping the beer bottle up again to get the last drops out of it. “Why, yes I am.”  
  


*

  
  
Lincoln has very few memories over the course of the last six months that include any laughter. In fact, he can’t remember the last time he’d had a good belly laugh. But Gretchen’s face as she comprehends what he’s said is so comical that he can’t help himself. Maybe it’s all the stress and tension and the unbelievable hoops he’s had to jump through to even make it a possibility all finally catching up with him, too, but it just pours out of him. Real, live mirth.  
  
Maybe it’s the beer buzz of two 12 oz. bottles ingested so quickly, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s been having sex for six straight hours with nothing else getting in the way, or that he finally got some sleep (which is a whole other issue in itself because he’s uncomfortable with the fact that he slept so peacefully in her presence, but can’t manage to when he’s alone). Whatever it is, it feels fan-fucking-tastic.  
  
It passes eventually, and Gretchen has moved so that she’s standing with him in the kitchen, her arms crossed over her breasts again, but this time it’s not a self-defensive gesture. The anger radiates off her in waves, and it takes all of Lincoln’s self-control to not burst into more laughter, so he turns his thoughts to how he ended up here.  
  
The day General Krantz shot and killed Christina Rose Scofield, Lincoln watched his mother die for a second time. It was no less real than the first time, even though the first time had been completely staged “to protect you and your brother.” They had gone off island for this meeting—the one that precipitated the deal to give Scylla away—and that had been all it had taken. The General had taken out who he considered to be the biggest traitor of them all, the woman he’d loved. Lincoln still found it sickening, so he tried to never dwell on that part of the story, because he didn’t understand exactly what had happened between his father and his mother that had caused her to shack up with the General. He knew it had happened, and his parents, in their terribly misguided way had tried to protect their children. They’d obviously done a bang up job of it, considering the line of carnage that had led to Christina’s death.  
  
Lincoln had grieved all over again, but he liked to think that that was the last murder, the last one because of greed for Scylla. He didn’t count his own execution of General Krantz, because that wasn’t murder; that was justice.  
  
He doesn’t have to explain all this to Gretchen; he knows she knows all of it. He will, however, have to explain it all to Michael at some point, assuming the jackass will ever speak to him again. When Lincoln gives Scylla up to the United Nations, his little brother will have a hard time finding a good reason to keep giving him the silent treatment.  
  
“I was never in it for the money,” he explains to her now, because this is the part she doesn’t understand—or is incapable of understanding, perhaps?  
  
“Oh, right. Don Self told me that you were the one asking him how much it was worth, while Mr. Brotherly Principles was all ‘we  _can’t_  sell it!’” Gretchen scoffs. “How can you  _give_  it away, Linc? How?”  
  
“It’s easy, actually,” he states. “Everyone I’ve ever loved, in one way or another, has been affected by this stupid thing. If it’s the last thing I do, to honor their memories, or just to honor them, it has to be with one last act of righteousness. Otherwise I’m no better than you, or T-Bag, or any of the other maggots like Self, who attached themselves to this to get ahead. All I ever wanted was my freedom—and to be left fucking alone!”  
  
“Sooooo,” she says, dragging the word out. “This is all to get Michael’s forgiveness then, isn’t it?”  
  
There’s no point in hedging it with her, and there’s no way she can stop the ball he already set to rolling, so he nods. “This is so I can look him, and my son, in the eye and tell them I set it right. As right as it can ever be set anyway,” he finishes. Moving his gaze down over her bare legs, he practically salivates while thinking he’d like at least one more round with her, but he figures it’s all gone with the wind now. She’s too disgusted with him to grant him any more favors. He wishes that didn’t disappoint him so much.  
  
She shakes her head. “Oh, Lincoln,” she says, her voice soft. “Why do you and your brother have to be so fucking noble? Why couldn’t you, at least, cross over, become what your parents were? I like Michael, he would have done all right, being so smart, but you— _you_... I want you. I want you to be here, to do this, to  _be_  this.” Her words aren’t a plea, even though he’s had this same conversation with other women in the past. She’s sincere, but she’s Gretchen, so there’s still the easy-come, easy-go vibe to her dirge, something that puts it on par with wanting the salmon, but since the restaurant’s fresh out, she’ll take the trout.  _Whatever_.  
  
“You didn’t really think there would be some us-together-forever thing if you came here, did you?” he questions, because he really wants to know. Maybe underneath all the sarcasm and clichés, she’s a regular girl with dreams of happily ever after. Or maybe she’s just a heartless wench who is truly incapable of loving her own child, though the thing that has puzzled Lincoln so much from the moment he was informed about the little girl, was that she’d had the baby at all.  
  
When he learned that the kid was also General Krantz’s, he’d felt confident she’d used it as been a bargaining chip at some point.  
  
Her arms loosen, dropping away from her torso. She leans back on the counter, her elbows positioning her just so that her breasts are thrust enticingly upward, the stark white smudged in two distinctive spots where her nipples are.  
  
Yes, he knew she ought to disgust him, on every level, but maybe there was a fine line between disgust and desire, because he could feel it starting to spark within him all over again.  
  
“No,” Gretchen replies. “I never thought we’d ride off into the sunset. Honestly, I figured you’d kill me as soon as you were done with me, but you’re all…soft, or something now.” She shakes her head, as though mystified by him. A smile curves her lips again. “When is this thing a done deal?” she asks, bringing him back to the main thread of their conversation.  
  
“Probably by the end of the week,” he responds. His palms are itching with wanting to reach out for her, but he knows that’s not going to happen again, so he turns back to the fridge and gets another beer out.  
  
“And then you’re off to Baja to be with Michael and LJ. And Sofia,” she adds at the last minute, something that throws him off as he pops the cap from the bottle.  
  
He shrugs. “I don’t think Sofia is still there. Got sick of waiting, I think.” Putting the bottle to his lips, he enjoys the refreshingly cool glide of it over his tongue, but what he really wants is heat and sweat and  _her_  in his mouth.  
  
Gretchen shakes her head again. “No, she’s still there. Pining away no doubt. But it’s going to pay off for her, the lucky bitch.” She pauses, then grins. “That’s two she’ll share with me now, you know. I had James once upon a time, too.”  
  
Lincoln can’t help the answering grin on his own face. “You are such a whore, and proud of it, aren’t you?”  
  
“You know that saying— _don’t hide your light under a bushel_? I’m good at seducing men, why pretend otherwise?”  
  
“You didn’t seduce me,” he says, setting the beer bottle down on the stove. Moving towards her, he figures he might as well give it one last shot. “It’s not seduction when you tell the guy you want to fuck him, Gretchen. Seduction is tricking him into it.”  
  
As he closes the distance between them, her smile widens. “I tricked you into  _liking_  it. I definitely seduced you. See, because what happens now is you’re going to go back to little Sofia, and when she doesn’t rock your world, you’re going to go jump in a hot shower and think about me, dripping wet for you, or sucking you off and blowing your mind, or—“ she reaches out, her hands quickly sliding inside the waistband of his briefs and skimming them right off his body so her palms can cup not only his erection, but his balls too. He releases a pent up breath, because he knows she’s right even before she finishes her list. “—screaming your name as you make me come because I’ve never had it so good either.”  
  
He starts unbuttoning the shirt that he never wanted her to put on, and he acknowledges that his problem had been, more than anything, that he didn’t want her hidden from his gaze because he knew it would be so short lived.  
  
They are sick and twisted in their lust for one another, but they’re well matched, and he’d been right when he thought it would be hard to let it go, whatever  _it_  was between them.  
  
As he brushes his fingers over her nipples and watches them harden and flush with color, he knows he’ll miss her when he leaves. He doesn’t bother removing the shirt; instead, he reaches around, grips her ass and lifts her up, propping her against the counter so that she'll spread her thighs for him, which she does without hesitation.  
  
Their eyes meet as he pushes inside her, the wet heat assuring him that he is not alone in his hunger. He bites back a groan, but her hands wrap around his neck to steady her position against him. Her fingernails dig into the sensitive skin at the base of his skull and she contracts her inner muscles with far more control than any woman should have, the fisting effect quite literally shoving a panting growl up through his lips. “See,” she says, panting herself, the gloating in that one word slap-worthy, but it just makes him want her more and he feels himself expand inside her as the lust boils up inside him like mercury in a thermometer. “You’ll always wish it was me, no matter who you fuck.”  
  
He covers her mouth with his, a punishing kiss all the answer he can muster at the moment. The knowledge that she’s right isn’t so much terrifying as it is inevitable, so he moves a hand between their writhing bodies to make sure she has the same problem for the rest of her life.  



	4. Chapter 4

Lying on her left side in the darkness, with her eyes staring unseeingly, and her body still except for the gentle movement of her torso as she breathes, she tries to go to sleep. He’s lying behind her, his breathing much deeper, and slightly louder. One of his arms is under her neck, the firm plumpness of his bicep cushioning her throat, while his other hand rests possessively on her hip.  
  
He sleeps and she cannot, and somehow that is the only justice he gets.  
  
Gretchen Morgan reflects back on the morning she got the call from the General to go and get James Whistler’s troublesome ass out of a Panamanian prison, and she likes to think she knew that was a good wind of fortune, because, well, she likes to think she knows everything.  
  
But she couldn’t have known this.  
  
She still can’t quite believe it.  
  
She feels tenderness for someone, even though they cannot be manipulated or coerced into doing what she wants them to do, even though they are about to give away something that’s net value is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. She ought to want to kill him, break his neck between her thighs like many another man who made the mistake of lowering their face for some fine dining.  
  
But no, she’d just let him suck and lick and breathe on her clitoris until she’d exploded, the eighth such explosion in as many hours, but by far the most powerful, and then she’d let him make love to her. Because that’s what it had been, her on the bottom, him moving slowly and agonizingly perfectly in and out of her so that by the time she came again she’d been crying in frustration and then in utter relief as the waves had crashed over her—an event that had lasted longer than any other single orgasm she can ever account for.  
  
That was after he’d fucked her against the kitchen counter. That had happened in the bed, the place he’d carried her to after they’d recovered from the incident in the kitchen. She’d lost all control of the situation, and she’d known that this went far beyond just wanting him to take the General’s place so they could really rule the kingdom together.  
  
How it had become so much more than that, she is unsure, but she has silent gratitude that it cannot go on, because that kind of vulnerability is not something she can give to someone, and then allow them to go on living. It’s impossible, and she knows it, and she sort of hopes if he knows it. He won’t try to rub it in her face for whatever time they have left together.  
  
Because maybe then she would find that bigger set of balls he thinks she has and she’d eliminate the threat that Lincoln Burrows is to her heart.  
  
The fact that it was her life, not her heart, that she had feared losing, but had been willing to give up to him does not make the reversal of those two items all right. She’d rather just roll herself up into a tight ball in the middle of the bed and wait for him to leave before she emerges, but she knows that won’t be possible.  
  
He wants to use the time they have, not squander it. He’ll probably even want a proper goodbye for all that he eats dinner in his underwear. She can see it in his eyes—he likes her now. It’s what she wanted, but she’d had no clue it would affect her the way it has.  
  
It has to be close to 3am, but she just lays in his arms, stewing over it, unable to sleep. She, like he, ought to be dead to the world because they have given each other a thorough workout. She’s sore already in various places, which means tomorrow—or rather, when daylight appears in a few hours—that more muscle stiffness and tenderness throughout her body will manifest itself.  
  
But it’s the best kind of ache, and she clings to it in a way, holding it like a precious secret. She knows now, in ways she has never been privileged to know before in all her 31 years, that there are things she’s been afraid of, rightfully so, but for all the wrong reasons.  
  
He shifts suddenly, groaning as his arms automatically contract, pulling her back into him. Then she feels him come awake, his erratic breaths now hitting the nape of her neck telling her he must have been dreaming something fairly exciting as the swiftly hardening organ poking her bottom confirms it.  
  
He abruptly relaxes, his arms still around her, though moving back to their original positions. She can feel him trying to calm his breathing, his chest brushing against her back in a slow, deep rhythm. Then he mutters into the hair against her neck, “You awake?”  
  
She hesitates in responding for just a moment. If there is no talking, there is no chance of things being said she doesn’t want to deal with, but at the same time, if she’s not going to be able to sleep, she might as well utilize her time with something more than dissecting every crazy emotion rioting through her. “Mmmm-hmmm,” she murmurs, hoping she sounds as though his sudden wakefulness is what brought on hers.  
  
The hand on her hip moves up, cupping her breast warmly. He seems obsessed with them, and she would like to ask why, but she doesn’t. Maybe he’s just a boob guy, and that’s all it boils down to, but his attention to them ever since he unbuttoned her blouse when they were on the floor by the front door, has been extensive. Flattering. Arousing.   
  
She’d never even realized just how much pleasure could be derived from breast fondling, at least on her part. She understood men quite enjoyed playing with them, she supposed because they didn’t have any, but Lincoln’s acute ability to strum her nipples into hard little points and drive her nearly insane with his tongue and teeth constituted the first time she’s really been aware of the gratification she could get from them.  
  
“I’m just wondering,” he says, his voice still gruff from sleep. “It may seem a bit late to bring it up, but should I be concerned about any little Burrowses showing up in 9 or so months?”  
  
His thumb moves lazily back and forth over her nipple, and she tries to focus on his words, because they actually require some coherency on her part. “No, you don’t ha-have to worry,” she answers, fighting to finish the sentence. “When Emily was born, I hemorrhaged, so they had to remove my uterus.”  
  
His thumb slides to a stop, and his face moves down into the curve of her neck. He uses his nose to move the strands of hair out of his way so his lips can touch skin. “What happened?” he asks.  
  
“Just a fluke. A tear during delivery. I had her naturally, but something went wrong, and they ended up having to open me up like I’d had a Caesarian. The universe’s way of making sure I couldn’t be anyone else’s mother, I guess.”  
  
It’s too much to share, and she knows it as soon as the words slide out into the dark room. She should sit up and flip the light on, take away the intimacy of the pitch blackness, but his arms tighten around her again, as though he knows what she’s thinking. The arm under her neck shifts her so she’s lying on her back with her shoulder pressed into his chest. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, his lips still lingering against her neck, sliding forward to cover her throat.  
  
Gretchen feels tears fill her eyes and she knows she can never turn the light on again.  
  
He’d apologized— _for what_? When his hand moves from her breast to her belly, she stiffens, but his fingers find the scar she has just described, moving laterally down her stomach into her pubic hair. “So that’s what this is,” he says, his voice so low and soft, it’s like he’s not even talking to her.  
  
She stirs against him, widening her thighs slightly so that if his hand goes lower, he’ll have easy access. She reaches for his cock with her left hand, because with the awkward way she’s positioned, it’s really the only portion of his body she can caress without difficulty. His lips are on the curve of her jaw, moving upward slowly with sweet, lingering kisses, and then he whispers at her ear lobe, “I have a proposition for you.” His tongue laves the tender part at the bottom of her ear before sucking it into his mouth, but the sensation is as electric for her as his fingers on her nipples, and she finds herself moaning his name.  
  
After a moment, she regains her breath and asks huskily, “What’s that?” while using one finger to gently nudge his foreskin back.  
  
He has a similar reaction to the one she’d just had, which causes him to remove his mouth from her ear and then his fingers surround her wrist to pull her hand away. “Don’t distract me, baby,” he entreats, and Gretchen feels something else foreign and unwanted invade her chest with the term of endearment. “I was thinking, when I leave here, you should stay.”  
  
“Stay?” she questions, her mind instantly deserting his cock as she tries to figure out what he means exactly. “Stay on the island, you mean?”  
  
His head moves back slightly on his pillow, so that if she turned her face towards him their lips would only be a few inches apart. “Yeah, you stay here. You’ll be safe, if there’s any of Krantz’s goons still out there looking to—“  
  
“I don’t need your protection, Lincoln. I can take care of myself. And believe me, once he was dead, everyone who was under his thumb scattered to the ends of the earth. There’s no reward in picking me off now.” She can’t decide if she’s touched or offended by his offer.  
  
“No reward, other than satisfaction. I can imagine there are few people out there that would just love to kill you,” he says, a hint of gentle mocking in his tone.  
  
“You mean, like yourself?” she asks, and when she tries to move away from him, his arms turn into iron bands, holding her securely.  
  
“No, I mean the ones who don’t want to get into your pants, the ones who  _just_  want to kill you. C’mon,” he cajoles, jostling her gently. “Think about it. You can move up to the big house, be waited on hand and foot. You can spend time on the beach, get some sun. Relax. Chill. Stop running.”  
  
She turns her head towards him, even though in the darkness all she can see is the bulk of his shape. “You want me to be your kept woman, is that it? So whenever you fly in for a weekend, there’s someone here to fuck?”  
  
He shakes his head negatively. “I doubt I’ll be coming back, so don’t think of it like that.”  
  
Wishing desperately that she could see his face to decipher what the hell he’s getting at, Gretchen strains against his hold. “How is it a proposition, then?” she demands.  
  
“I want you to call Rita, and have her and Emily come live here with you.”  
  


*

  
  
Before T-Bag met with a timely demise, Lincoln had wrestled every last piece of information out of him concerning Gretchen’s sister and daughter. Turns out when you spend several hours holding someone hostage, and then you let them go because of some freakish streak of good will, you have a lot of time to learn about them. Gleaning every little detail about the only people Lincoln figured Gretchen loved, he told himself he was tucking it away as leverage. She’d kidnapped his kid; maybe someday he’d get around to doing her the same favor.   
  
You never knew what you’d be pushed to do.   
  
But then Krantz had served himself up on a silver platter, practically, and Lincoln decided to retire from this life he’d never wanted anyway. And when someone from Air Traffic Control in Jacksonville, Florida called to say that Gretchen Morgan had just chartered a private flight to Lincoln’s mother’s small island, he’d had a flash of an idea.  
  
Supposing Gretchen wasn’t on her way there to kill him, maybe he could do something kind, something good, for the one person who didn’t deserve it. He hadn’t wanted to kill her anymore, though he’d still wanted to fuck her. Besides, from what he’d heard about Rita, she was a good person, and little Emily couldn’t help that she was the spawn of two criminals. Here, in this place, they would be safe and sound for their entire lives. Emily could go to school with the locals, and someday she could go to college. He didn’t know what Rita did for work, but it wouldn’t be hard for the Corporation (what was left of The Company), who would run independently of the United Nations on just the technological aspects, to give her a paper pushing job, or number input or something. Hell, even Gretchen could do that if she wanted.  
  
Or they could do nothing; he really didn’t care.  
  
He found, that ultimately anyway, he just wanted them to be safe. But he decided not to dwell on that want for too long, or examine how the desire had grown stronger the longer he was naked with Gretchen, so he just offers it up in the hopes that she will accept.  
  
She springs up out of the bed, fumbles for the light and throws the room into sudden illumination, which causes him to hold his hand over his eyes since he had forced himself not to hold her down. He knew it was a request that would be met with opposition, but he is still hopeful he can convince her.  
  
Her beauty takes his breath again, however, and as she flits around the bedroom—searching for just what, he doesn’t know—he becomes distracted by the curvature of her body. She holds her hair back with one hand while she rummages through one of the bureau drawers, and finally pulls out one of his wifebeaters and a pair of boxers he never wears. It’s then that he realizes she can’t find her clothes, the ones she wore into the house anyway, and she never had gone back to her car to get her luggage, so she has to make do with his sparse wardrobe.  
  
She pulls the tank top over her head violently and then steps into the underwear and stomps out of the bedroom without saying a word. He isn’t sure if he should go after her or not, but when he hears the front door slam, he figures he has his answer. She doesn’t want his help, and she’s not even going to let him argue the point.  
  
He’s glad he made sure he got the chance to be on top before she took off. It had been glorious, even if having her ride him had been just as hot. Really, every way they had done it, with mouths, tongues, fingers or sexual organs, it had been hot. Trying to catalog which time had been the hottest was like trying to decide which A+ grade Michael had gotten on a report card was the best one. Each time had rocked his world, to use her own words, and damn him, but he ought to stop thinking about it, since it’s making him hard, and she isn’t coming back.  
  
He knows he won’t be able to go back to sleep, so he gets up and pads into the bathroom to take a shower. Rethinking his strategy, he decides he should have asked her while he was fucking her, because he might have been able to force her into an agreement in a moment of blind lust.  
  
Turning the water on, he starts grinning to himself.  _Oh, if only he’d thought of that sooner!_  Climbing into the shower, he ducks his head under the flow of the water, but the caressing heat combines with his thoughts of her, which seem to rush like a montage across his mind, and he realizes she’s cursed him. It would be a crime to try to take up with Sofia again after this, but he’s likely to do it anyway. What a bastard he’ll be when he closes his eyes and thinks about her—so hot and so wet and tighter than a fist—but comes inside Sofia.   
  
Now, he tries to stop the thoughts, but it would take more will power than he’s got, besides the fact that an erection is pretty mind consuming even when it’s not the result of 10 hours of rolling around with a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing. Reaching up, he redirects the showerhead so that it streams water right over his head and then he braces himself with one hand flat against the tile while he wraps his other fist around his rigid penis. Closing his eyes, he sees Gretchen fully clothed on the beach, then half undressed on top of him on the floor, then totally naked on top of him in the bed. He feels her breasts against his chest, and then sliding down his belly as her hair tickles his thighs and her tongue extends, purposely teasing him visually before it touches him physically. That’s it, that’s the memory that makes him come, and he stifles a groan, even though there’s no one to hear it.  
  
Resting his face on the back of his hand on the tiled wall, he pants heavily, and then an overwhelming sadness swoops over him, causing tears to prick his eyes. It’s not the sex he’ll miss, because God knows, the memories will probably be potent enough, but he does wish she’d stayed, and that she would have found some piece of happiness.  
  
He knows that once he’s back with LJ and Michael, the rest will work itself out. Michael’s not as mad as he once was, according to Lincoln’s son, anyway, and the truth is he and Michael have never been able to hold grudges against each other, not for extended periods of time anyway. Michael will be fine once he realizes Lincoln didn’t turn into General Krantz, and Lincoln will be fine when he has his family back.  
  
He thinks Gretchen would be much better off if she had her family too.  
  
The bathroom is steamy when he gets out of the shower and he uses a hand to wipe the moisture from the mirror. Running a towel over his head, he thinks again about growing his hair, and shedding the last thing that reminds him of Fox River and everything that led him here. When he goes to Baja, he won’t cut his hair for six months, he decides suddenly. Wrapping the towel around his hips, he goes back into the bedroom, but draws up short when he sees Gretchen. She’s sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed, her back pressed up against it with her elbows resting on her upraised knees.  
  
“I thought you left,” he says, because he’s too shocked to come up with anything more suave.  
  
“So did I,” she says, looking up at him. “I got all the way to my car, but I was so pissed at you, I didn’t think I could leave without telling you off, so I grabbed my suitcase and came back here.”  
  
Her eyes are snapping, and she looks ready to fight, but her stance is not aggressive, and Lincoln isn’t even sure what she’s mad about—that he suggested it, or that it’s probably what she wants, secretly, deep inside herself.  
  
“So let me just make sure I’ve got this straight,” she continues. “I can stay here—obligation free—so long as I have my sister and my child come here to live with me. That’s your grand plan?”  
  
He’s a little annoyed that he wasted the erection he had on himself, especially now that he’s got the idea to coerce her into it when she’s hanging on the edge by her fingernails. What good is having a great plan if you can’t use it? Then again, by the look of her, he thinks maybe he can convince her without tricks. Walking over, he sits down next to her, keeping the towel covering everything from his belly button to his lower thighs. He stretches his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles and then he says, “Yep. That’s my grand plan.”  
  
She turns her head to look at him, but her normal mask of irritation is slightly tempered with what Lincoln would call hope. “Just because you want to be with your family, you figure that must be what I want, right?” she asks, and like the expression on her face, the sarcasm in her tone is also muted by another emotion.  
  
“What did you come here for, Gretchen?” he asks rhetorically. He goes on before she can answer, even if she would be so inclined. “You came here hoping for connection, for something that would keep us together. But you have to know, as hot as we burn, when the flame goes out, it’s going to be a doozy. We’re not meant for anything lasting and meaningful. But you could have something meaningful in your life, if you let your family in. You could get a clue about what’s really important, and what matters, and hell, maybe you’d even start to  _feel_  those things. Imagine if you didn’t just have an idea in your head, but it was something you felt in your heart? Imagine if you could feel a thread of redemption through your little girl’s laughter, her joys and pains. Imagine if you were there, to help her through that shit. That, my friend,  _is_  a grand plan. It’s the grandest one possible. It’s your only chance.”  
  
As he speaks, her eyes start glistening, but he keeps going on as though he doesn’t see the tears. As he finishes, he reaches for her face, rubbing a thumb over the ridge of her cheekbone where some tears have collected. “Now, tell me you don’t want it, and I’ll believe you,” he says, looking hard into her eyes, holding her face firmly so she can’t retreat from him.  
  
She lifts a hand, and her fingers circle his wrist, but it’s not to pull his arm down; instead her fingers contract around his forearm, squeezing him hard. “I don’t want to feel all these things,” she confesses quietly. “But I guess my first mistake was coming here at all, because now I can’t stop it.”  
  
“You don’t want to,” he corrects.  
  
A half-smile crosses her face briefly. “Oh, no, I do want to stop it, but it’s impossible. Whatever you’ve done, you’ve managed to tear something loose inside me that I didn’t even know existed.” She sighs, and her face moves slightly, causing his palm to caress her cheek. “It would have been better if you just killed me,” she almost whispers.  
  
Lincoln feels a rush of pity for her, an unexpected but poetic end to the changes that have been happening inside him as well. “That’s the coward’s way out, baby. If there’s anything I know about you, it’s that you’re not a coward.”  
  
She stares at him for a long moment, and then a real grin covers her face. “I’m pretty good in bed too, you have to admit.”  
  
His lips curve upward in response, and he has a moment of regret.  _If only things could be different._  
  
“Yeah, you’re the best I’ve had, no lie.” Then he adds with a chuckle, “And I’m not just saying that to get you to do what I want.”  



	5. Chapter 5

Over the course of the next few days, they develop a routine.  
  
It’s quite ridiculous, Gretchen acknowledges, at least to herself, but it is something she could easily get used to. A part of her hopes every morning as he makes love to her before he goes to the office, that when the moment comes he won’t be able to leave her.  
  
But she knows he will. He has to. This cannot go on, and probably the biggest reason it can’t is because she doesn’t deserve it. She doesn’t deserve this kind of happiness, not after everything she’s done.  
  
What’s really sick, though, is that Lincoln  _does_  deserve it. He deserves to have someone for real, not just someone to play house with for a few days. He definitely needs someone more exciting than Sofia Lugo, though. Gretchen supposes he won’t settle for that once he gets to Baja—but part of her also hopes he is miserable without her.  
  
While he’s negotiating who will do what with regard to Scylla, she lies around the bungalow and watches television; he doesn’t invite her to come with him, and she finds that she really doesn’t care to. Without the payoff, Scylla really isn’t very interesting to her, and so she focuses on the idea of staying in one place for an extended period of time. She calls it ‘practicing’ because she really doesn’t know if she’s capable of just living with Rita and Emily. Not because she wouldn’t love to, but because it’s been so long since she did anything remotely like it.  
  
When she says as much to Lincoln, he suggests therapy.  
  
She also discovers that she’s no cook, but she makes a mean salad, and since there are plenty of vegetables in the well-stocked refrigerator, she uses them. She attempts to make spaghetti one night, but Lincoln ends up finishing it for her because she almost dumps the sauce into the pan containing the noodles without draining the water off of them first. When he grabs it away from her, she feels rather foolish, because of course, the noodles need to be drained, and she knew that, really, but what is she supposed to say? She’s literally never cooked anything. She is incompetent when it comes to all things domestic.  
  
But he just laughs, and doesn’t seem to care at all, and she watches his face with a growing ache in her chest. She’s really fucked herself up this time. Loving him was never part of the plan, and it’s the worst feeling in the world because it can’t go on.  
  
So they have a lot of sex. Whenever Gretchen’s feelings swell up uncontainably, she goes down on him, or invites him to pleasure her in some way, and he never refuses. On the fourth day, she realizes they’re having a pseudo-honeymoon, and she’s thankful that thought occurs to her as she showers alone. Lincoln has already left for the office, but she ends up kneeling on the shower floor, her gut wrenching sobs echoing off the beige tile.  
  
Opening herself up this way has been both the biggest revelation of her life, and also the hardest thing she’s ever done. The urge to run away is almost constantly combated by the fact that she’s on a draining hourglass timetable, and every day brings them closer to when he will leave.  
  
She procrastinates calling Rita, and she anticipates that at practically any given moment Lincoln will ask her about it. But he doesn’t. Instead, he instructs her about the ‘Big House’ and the servants, and how everyone gets paid through an accountant who handles everything for him. He sets her up with the names and phone numbers of all the people she would need to know for various things, including a family doctor and a dentist. He calls her ‘baby’ and smiles at her, bends her over the arm of the sofa and fucks her like he’s got all the time in the world, and cuddles her against him on the same sofa as they watch various action movies on cable.  
  
Finally, as the credits roll on the fifth such movie in the same number of days, she feels his lips on her temple. Then he murmurs, “Tomorrow, Scylla will be a done deal.”  
  
Gretchen snuggles into him, her eyes closed because she was drifting to sleep. They remain closed now because she doesn’t want to face the truth with them wide open. “And when do you leave for Baja?” she questions.  
  
He hesitates, just briefly. “The day after that.”  
  
His voice is low, his tone an intimate rumble that reminds her that he doesn’t have to say sexy stuff to turn her on. Just being who he is, is enough. Instead of responding to that—and in an attempt to avoid how it makes her feel, she confesses, “I don’t know if Rita will agree to this.”   
  
“You mean coming here to live with you?” he clarifies.  
  
“Yes,” Gretchen replies. “She probably wants nothing to do with me.”  
  
He waits again, just a beat, before saying, “Probably, but you’re her family, and she might make an exception if you tell her you’re turning over a new leaf. Besides, if you can’t get her to come here, we’ll fly to LA and get her. I can convince her,” he says firmly.  
  
“You are ridiculously over-confident,” she says, opening her eyes and tipping her head back so that she can see his face.  
  
Chuckling, he leans his face down and rubs his lips over hers. “My self-esteem tends to go up after a few blowjobs.”  
  
She starts laughing, unable to help herself. “Then you must be on top of the world right now,” she says, watching while his face is transformed by a shit-eating grin.  
  
He nods. “Things look pretty amazing from up here, I gotta say.”  
  
Gretchen feels her heart clench in her chest and she starts shaking her head negatively. “If she won’t come out here from just a phone call, I don’t want us to try to go convince her. I need this to be over when you leave.”  
  
She can tell from the expression on his face that her sudden mood shift surprises him, but very quickly, he seems to understand what she’s saying, and that, for some inexplicable reason, makes her start crying. She pulls herself from his arms, and climbs off the couch. Pacing away from him, she wanders over to a window by the front door, though she hasn’t ever looked out of it since she’s been there, she suddenly finds the view fascinating.  
  
“I’ll go alone to convince her, Gretchen. You wouldn’t have to come with me. And if she still says no, you can stay here anyway. The proposition is only dependent on you being willing to ask her, not her being willing to do it.”  
  
In irritation, she turns toward him. “Why do you have to be so nice about this?” she demands. “Remember five days ago when you threw me up against this door and tongue fucked my brains out? I didn’t even know for sure if you’d let me live past that orgasm, much less anything else. I need you to be that ruthless son of a bitch, Linc. That’s who you should be, so when you leave m—here I can stand it.”  
  
His eyebrows shoot up, but he remains in his slouched position in the corner of the couch. “You’re gonna try to pin this on me? You’re the one who kissed me on the mouth and started being sweet. You’re the one who changed the tone of this—“ waving his hand in the air between them, he disdainfully indicates their physical relationship— “thing.” Heaving out a deep breath, he continues, “I was never as bad as you thought I was, but you were always such a bitch, I had to match you.”  
  
Gretchen thinks of a million things she could fire off in response, but it’s his last remark that gives her pause. She’d never considered that; in her line of work, she had always been up against people equally ruthless, and lots of times even more unscrupulous than she. She’d never stopped to consider that Lincoln had some sort of moral code, and had probably in his previous life, been an ardent and rather thoughtful lover. But of course he was. It was all there for her to understand—Michael hadn’t just become Mr. Morality; he’d been raised by Lincoln more or less. Some of that integrity must have originated with his brother.   
  
Turning back to the window, she bites her bottom lip until she tastes blood. She’d never bothered to delve too deeply into Lincoln’s romantic past other than to discover he’d been briefly married to LJ’s mother, a time period that indicated they’d gotten hitched due to an unplanned pregnancy. He’d had one long term relationship with the now-dead Veronica Donovan, and its on-again, off-again status seemed to correlate with the duration of his marriage.  
  
And then, of course, he’d shacked up with Sofia in Panama. Despite his prowess in the sex department, she would guess that his belt wasn’t as notched as other men with his same expertise. He was more of the monogamous type. When she compared that with his love and loyalty to his brother and son, she felt stupid that she’d ever thought she could come here and propose a union of sorts between them, but be satisfied with a few rolls in the hay and then be on her merry way if he wasn’t interested in a long-term business arrangement.  
  
Lincoln couldn’t help romancing her, because it was his way.  
  
Lost in her thoughts, she doesn’t hear him come up behind her. Then his arms slide around her waist, and he tugs her back against his body. “Sorry,” he murmurs, his lips moving gently against her jaw line.  
  
“What are you sorry for?” she asks, blinking back the tears that she seems to fight on a daily basis now.  
  
“That you feel bad. That we got in too deep. That I can’t stay.” He buries his face in her neck. “Whichever.”  
  
Leaning her head back on his shoulder, she sighs forlornly. Resting her arms over his, she presses back against him as she feels his embrace tighten. That’s it really, in all its simplicity. Neither of them could have known it would be like this, that somehow it would become real. “I know you can’t stay,” she whispers. He’s stolen her breath again with his tongue flicking over the sensitive skin of her neck, but whispering also makes it so he can’t hear the tears in her voice. “I know it,” she repeats.  
  
“LJ would never understand. Fuck,  _I_  barely understand it,” he says, his tone soft and low as it delivers deathblows.  
  
She can’t help the watery giggle that ruptures from her throat. “Me, either,” she says.  
  
She can feel an erection growing against the cleft of her bottom, but he pulls away and gently says, “Maybe you should call Rita before we go to bed.”  
  
Blinking rapidly before turning to face him, she forces a smile to her lips. “I think you’re right.”  
  
  


*

  
  
Lincoln sits on the arm of the sofa, listening to every word she says. She could have gone into the bedroom if she wanted privacy, and he supposes, he still could get up and leave her to it alone, but he doesn’t because he doesn’t want to. He wants to hear how she sounds as she asks her sister to give her another chance.   
  
He wants to see her humbled.  
  
So he watches her with no pretense of doing anything else, and she just sits on a stool at the breakfast bar and returns his stare while she asks Rita to come to a little island she’s never even heard of. He can tell it’s not going well at first, but then Gretchen asks to speak to Emily, and really pulls out all the stops. She asks her daughter if she’d like to come visit ‘Auntie Gretchen’ on a beautiful tropical island. The child’s response is slightly more enthusiastic than her sister’s, he can tell by the wide smile that comes over her face.  
  
A few minutes later, Rita must take the phone back from Emily because Gretchen’s expression becomes serious again. When he hears her say, “You won’t regret it, I swear to you,” he is rewarded with discovering what he’d hoped all along. Rita, like any good woman, is looking for a reason to give her big sister another chance. Lincoln knows what an opportunity like that means, very personally, and he has faith that it will have the same effect in Gretchen’s life that it has had in his.  
  
She hangs up the phone, but remains sitting at the bar, her gaze resting on him. “She said yes,” she announces.  
  
He nods, and pushes himself off the arm of the sofa. As he walks around the island into the kitchen, he says, “I figured.” He opens the fridge door and gestures to the well-stocked right side of the top shelf where all the beer sits. “You want?” he asks, looking at her over his shoulder.  
  
Gretchen’s eyes turn smoky, the thought of her sister fading away very plainly in that instant. “I want,” she says.  
  
Lincoln knows she means something entirely different than beer, and it’s enough to get him to close the door without retrieving anything for himself. He circles back around so that he can stand in front of her as she slides off the stool. Her bare toes brush his when her feet touch the ground. “It’s a done deal,” she says softly. Lifting her arms, she locks her wrists around his neck and pulls herself up so she’s pressed tightly against him.   
  
“It is,” he agrees while their eyes communicate something bigger and deeper than their words.   
  
“When the time comes, just go, okay? Don’t say anything, or make any grand gestures. It’s all been more than I deserve anyway.”  
  
He drops his gaze to her lips, which have been devoid of her usual lipstick all week. In fact, she hadn’t really put any make up on at all, and he’d noticed, only because she had a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks that he had never seen before. She looks younger, and fresh, as though she has her whole life ahead of her. As though anything is possible.  
  
And maybe it is, he realizes, in part due to him. Leaning down, he brushes his mouth over hers, his breath speeding up when her tongue makes the first foray over his bottom lip and then her teeth sink gently into it too. Against her mouth, he whispers, “Whatever you want,” which is a lie, because he can’t give her what she really wants—what  _he_  really wants.  
  
She bites him again, and this time it hurts so he hisses in pain. He thinks she did it purposely, as retaliation for the lie, but then her lips open up and he takes control of the kiss and it doesn’t matter if it’s his blood or hers between them, because somehow in the middle of all of this, it has become theirs together; theirs to hoard away in their memories, and theirs to bemoan privately that it can’t continue, and theirs to lose—or give up, depending on how you looked at it.  
  
It had become something neither of them could have expected when they met up on the beach. As he pulls her into the bedroom, to the bed that he has spent more hours in with her in five days than all the months he’d previously been there by himself, he knows just how it will end. He will take her as many times as is physically possible tonight, not allowing either of them any sleep and when he finally lets her go, she will be so exhausted that nothing will penetrate her consciousness for hours.  
  
While she sleeps, he’ll leave, and they won’t have to say goodbye. When he flies out to Mexico in only 36 hours, they will become nothing more than a memory.  
  
The end could have been so much less than it was; he could have killed her on the hot pavement in Los Angeles, or he could have killed her in the stifling humidity of Panama. Or he could have let her come here and almost loved her.  
  
It isn’t the ending either of them expected, but now, as he kisses his way down the shadowy hills and valleys of her body, he knows he hasn’t given her what she wants, only what she needs.  
  
And somehow that feels like winning the war with The Company more than anything else he’s done.  
  
Michael and LJ are waiting for him, and it's time to face the music.


End file.
